Sunday Funnies: Unicorns More Realistic Than Running a Grid on Renewables and Batteries

The Time to Go Nuclear Facebook Page is definitely worth a follow. They published this meme and boy is it spot on.

Unicorns are just as realistic as the battery request.

I recently wrote about an Xcel Energy slideshow which shows the enormous cost of using 100 percent renewable energy with battery backup in California. The slide was notable because it shows the cost of electricity increases exponentially as renewable and battery storage penetration increases.

The numbers I wrote about in the piece above only reflected the costs on Xcel Energy customers, who use less electricity than other customers due to high natural gas use for home heating, but now I’ve applied these cost estimates to the state of Minnesota as a whole. Using Xcel’s cost estimates for a grid powered by 100 percent wind, solar, and batteries, the average Minnesota electricity bill would increase from $103 to $1,257 per month, —a yearly cost $15,091, a sum I doubt anyone would be willing to pay.

Maybe unicorns are more realistic, after all.